Octopus submarine is something out of [Jules Verne]‘s imagination

Making an octopus on a Reprap or Makerbot isn’t that terribly hard. There were dozens of these octopuses at nearly every Maker Faire booth with a 3D printer. These octopuses have almost become a right of passage for new owners of 3D printers, and serves as a wonderful reference object on par with the Utah teapot and the Stanford bunnyRead the rest

Running into the Form 1 printer at Maker Faire

The Form 1 resin printer Kickstarter met its funding goal in just about 8 hours, and after five days is on track to be the most successful Kickstarter to date. Being so successful meant we had to drop by the FormLabs booth at Maker Faire to see what the hubub is.

From the sample prints floating around the booth, the … Read the rest

Fitting a CNC machine, 3D printer, and vinyl cutter in a suitcase

Maker Faire NY is awash with new and interesting computer controlled tools, but the most unusual so far appears to be Popfab, a combination router, 3D printer, and vinyl cutter able to collapse down into a suitcase.

Popfab is the brainchild of [Nadya Peek] and [Ilan Moyer] of the MIT CADLAB. With interchangeable heads for routing PCBs, 3D printing, and … Read the rest

Turning 3D prints into aluminum castings

[Jeshua] needed a laser head attachment for a 5×10 foot CNC machine he’s working on. Because he has a 3D printer, [Jeshua] could easily print a laser mount and attach it to his CNC gantry, but that wouldn’t look very professional. Instead of decorating his gigantic machine with brightly colored plastic, he decided for a more industrial look by casting Read the rest

Turning a shipping container into a 3D printer

Built inside a 20-foot shipping container placed on its end, the Kamermaker – ” room maker” in Dutch – is one of the largest 3D printers we’ve ever seen. Able to print objects as big as 2 meter square and 3.5 meters high, the Kamermaker is designed to print huge objects including furniture, architectural elements, and even entire rooms.

The … Read the rest

3d printer filament made of wood

Believe it or not, you can now squeeze wood through the nozzle of your 3D printer.

This new addition to the maker’s palette of 3D printer filaments comes from the mind of [Kai Parthy]. The new filament – going by the name Laywood – is a mix of recycled wood fibers and polymer binders that can be melted and … Read the rest

Introducing the Makerbot Replicator 2

A few short hours ago at press conference, Makerbot announced the release of their Replicator 2 3D printer.

The original Makerbot Replicator was released earlier this year at CES and regaled by the press as a quantum leap in home manufacturing (a quanta is actually very small, guys) with and option for dual extruders and a rather large build … Read the rest